The first Tomb Raider and Lara Croft's first adventure is still an enjoyable experience, even though it is dated as hell.

There is a wonderful automated patch floating around the Community Guides which fixes most issues and makes the game look semi-decent. It's old, and it shows, the character models are blocky and the texturework is pretty bare-bones, but this is a game from 1996 that's not Quake, so it gets a "barely passed" from me. Don't get me started on Lara's triangular knockers.

That said, the core gameplay is still enjoyable. The puzzles are pretty challenging and the platforming is no joke either. Good thing you get unlimited saves in the PC version, I can't imagine how people got by on the PS with save crystals (aka limited saves), I must have saved like 900 times during the main campaign (being the wimpus that I am). What I like about the early TR games is that if you fall to your death, it's your fault, 99.9% of the time. The game is very precise in that, after you come to grips with the dated controls, you know exactly how far you jump with each jump type, how to not walk off ledges, which surfaces you can land on and which will result in a short trip to the morgue via a spike pit or lava pool. This was probably done because of technical limitations, but back in those days, devs knew how to make a fun and fair game within those limitations. It's not "clunky movement". It's a game mechanic. My old man recently bought TR: Anniversary and I tried it for a while... it's a pretty good game, but I missed the harshly methodic movement of OG Tomb Raider. In short, the gameplay has lots of depth.

The levels are pretty cool as well - I played TR2 mostly when I was a kid and while I have fond memories of that game, I must admit that as a whole, TR1 had more enthralling and interesting levels - Peru, Greece, Egypt and finally the lost city of Atlantis. Like I said, they're not too pretty and the texturework is basic, but even so you can appreciate the amount of work that went into creating mysterious complex maps of mostly non-linear mazes with more switches and keys than you can shake a low-polygon stick at.

The music is also quite simple, and I think TR was one of the first action games that featured dynamic music, although I wish there were some kind of idle background tune instead of the creepy ambient noise. Don't get me wrong, the creepy ambient noise is perfect for the atmosphere, it really makes you feel like this adventuring bad4ss lady on a mission to find hidden treasure, though it's weird to suddenly shift to a dramatic, heart-pumping score while shooting and go back to near-silence at a moment's notice; that is to say, the music has locational triggers, not situational, which also means that if you kill all the enemies in that area and cross the trigger point, you'll get "high-octane" music blaring over you doing squat nothing intense.

However, as much as the platforming (I would argue) still does hold up, the shooting just plain sucks. It sucks even more in TR2 and TR2 inherited it's suck from this game. While the game does have 100% autoaim, the enemies are bullet sponges, they jump around in areas that barely allow for effective movement or dodging. It's not that the enemies have a lot of health. It's not that they are frequently spawned in tight, cramped areas. It's not that your turning speed is slow. It's all of that combined and the end result is just... bad. Not dated, bad. It's kind of a shame because when you DO get to move around properly and dodge stuff, shooting with more powerful guns, it actually works and it's not too shabby, but these moments are few and far inbetween. I remember talking with some friends back in the day who all played TR2 and no-one liked the combat in these games. That said, the shooting isn't frequent enough to really detract from the tomb raiding.

All in all, a game that shows its age, but it still holds up as a fun experience. If you've never played a TR game, maybe don't start with this one because they are pretty relentless and confusing at times, but do play through this game once in your life if you're a fan of 3D platforming/exploration games. Also, this game is DIRT cheap on sales, it's like 0.97€. I pay more for a loaf of bread if I buy whole-grain presliced. And you will get at least 12+ hours (more if you download the patch I mentioned which also includes the free 4-level expansion pack "Unfinished Business") out of it. If you know the YouTube channel Funhaus, they used to have this show called "One Dollar = One Hour". If this isn't bang for buck, I don't know what is.

Thanks for reading :- )
I back up the "TOMBRAID" folder before format the pc; I knew that the save files of this Tomb Raider should be there;
but I found file with name and extension like this: "LEV1_0.3DF"
I knew that they should be like "savegame.1"
I...